6x02 with thinky thoughts
This was the first shapeshifter episode that I didn't capslock LOVE on initial viewing. I'm still not quite sure how I feel about everything. A lot of this rambling is me just working through my thoughts. I'll probably like it more and more as I re-watch it. Trying to approach it with an open mind, since I loved a great deal of the character work in it. I just wasn't in love with the periods at the end of their sentences. I liked it a lot better this morning than I did last night, and I started loving it this afternoon. \o/
One thing I liked was that they showed more than one aspect of Dean in Dad mode. I thought the scenes with Ben were well done and part of the scene with Sam was well done, so I'll go into what I liked about it before I gripe. I liked that they showed the fact that he's sort of hard-wired now to be excellent with children but also sort of hard-wired to fall into the same trap that John fell into, and that the two sides of his Dad effect are not at odds but come hand-in-hand together. The very way John raised Dean comes back in moments of grace and ugliness in Dean's interaction with Ben and, of course, all throughout their lives with Sam. I liked very much that they showed how easily it happens to people in Dean's shoes, in John's shoes, in a soldier's shoes or cop's shoes, to damage by trying to protect. Dean's approach being one of closeness rather than one of abandonment wouldn't shield Ben from the effect of living in fear, and the more the world crowded in, the worse it would get. That's just inevitable, certainly now that we know Heaven and Hell keep playing the Winchesters for fools. I liked very much that we saw Dean recognizing that, and handled delicately, I think it could have been quite a moment for him to come full circle. It doesn't forgive John, it doesn't damn John. It just explains John, as well as the very differences that prevent Dean from making the same mistakes that John made. Sam and Lisa aren't what catch him. I think recognizing himself in Ben's expression is what catches him. We don't know what John went through in war but we do know he was raised a "civilian" as far as the hunting world, and he didn't have a reflection of himself to catch himself when Mary died and he fell off the rails. If Sam had been in Dean's shoes here, being the one who had been protected rather than the protector, I'm not sure he would have caught himself before he fell into it headlong. For Dean--having dealt with it with Mary, then John, then Sam--it must have been like a reflection off that shattered glass of the title card. So again the show draws parallels (delicately now) between Sam and John, Dean and Mary. This has been threaded through their relationships since we met young Mary and John in S4. The protector recognizes more clearly what all is lost to fear. The protected hasn't the same frame of reference. Context is an invaluable measure. Context and history.
But, then again, the issues of context and measure felt strangely lacking in the final summary. Which way does he go from here? It seems to be that, prior to the djinn hallucinations, Lisa and Ben went about their usual lives with little to no exposure to the world contained in the Impala's trunk. The little clues of Dean's fucked-up headspace did not appear to indicate that he had them on any kind of lockdown until undead Sam and undead Campbells and djinns and such showed up in his life. So while I can understand where they were going with the move, the yelling over the guns, the paranoia, I think Sam's summary was a little too final with little supporting evidence outside of general information that we simply know about Dean after watching for 5 seasons. But as to that, what we saw of Dean and Sam's childhood was nothing close in measure to what Lisa and Ben were seeing, and I think suggesting that Dean was doing exactly the same as John rather misses the boat on just how much damage their childhood did to Sam and Dean and just how many bad choices John piled one on top of the other. These are issues I wanted Dean to have to deal with as the person in the middle (between Sam and Lisa/Ben, between John/his past and Ben/his future), and that I wanted Sam to have to deal from the standpoint of trying to bring a loved one back into his life. The character work here (for Sam, for Dean, for Lisa)--what they're actually doing--felt wonderfully gray, but the conclusions felt too black and white. "Dad raised us on the road! You moved Ben to a new house! The cheap motels, abandonment, weapons training, emotional abuse are all next!!" Even Dean's own change of viewpoint from being intensely fearful of Lisa and Ben being hurt (by anything from MOTWs to his own gun collection) to going along with Lisa's suggestion at the end, complete with S1-ish music cues... Everything they were building up just fell flat when Sam spelled it out. It just felt too simplified, almost strawman, when a grittier, more in-depth exploration of that could have yielded such beautiful material. I need to watch The Hurt Locker to see where Jensen pulled his inspiration from, because the acting is there and the character choices are there, but how it's being summed up leaves me discontent.
Basically, my main problem is that it had such a blanket feel to it: Door 1 or Door 2, with no one saying, "Hey, aren't there windows? Creaks in the floor? Who's to say either of these Doors go anywhere at all? Why walk into a box? Why not explore the world outside?" Then Lisa, of all people, brought it up but I swear, the first time I watched it that conversation kept sinking her, then saving her, then sinking her, then saving her... "You're a hunter!" Really. "We'll be here! Come when you can!" Really...? Although I appreciate that as the way a cop's or soldier's spouse would be, in the context of this show and given what went on before and what the whole issue was between them, those lines didn't work for me. Everything being said was what needed to be said for the boys' togetherness, although a lot of water under the bridge set them up to be far apart for a very long while. I guess it's just one of those times when the show's use of anvils particularly grates, where I appreciate this sentence they've written but I really dislike the period at the end. You know...? I really loved what I loved of it, the maturity and independence of her standpoint, but I felt like the script was trying to hold my hand for the other part of it, the getting the boys together again part of it, the part that reminded me of Douche Yodas and Real Ghostbusters. I much prefer this relationship when it's simply allowed to be a relationship rather than a stepping stone.
But when I watched it a second time, I realized it was just those lines that grated, and the rest of the conversation was quite good, with both of them bringing up valid points and expressing themselves like adults with adult responsibilities and I have to take back my initial impression. That scene was beautiful. (But for sam's sake, I never want to hear anyone inform either boy that "You're a hunter!" ever again. Because, really. Shut up, show. We get it. Ugh. And coming from a woman Dean was about to leave to go adventuring with the other boys, it just seemed very... disposable, yeah?) But okay. I loved it. I loved Lisa in that scene, I loved how Jensen played that scene, I loved how they allow that human beings sometimes don't have an answer for a difficult situation but want to make the best of something that's worth fighting for.
Okay, then, speaking of Lisa... ♥ I adore her. Honestly, now. Honestly? If I had to rank them, she would be my favorite character of the season by far, and yes, that's including both Winchester boys. I love that continued sense of this war zone aspect to their relationship, how she's very much like a soldier's spouse, or a cop's, going into the relationship with eyes wide open and appreciating some of the very things about this man that might be part of what drives him to drink: her family can rest easy at night because he is on watch. She seems to understand both the beauty and the ugliness of that situation without any misconceptions of her ability to heal him or his ability to be Joe the Plumber. So she takes him as is and accepts him into her life and her son's life until the way he is threatens to override the way she wants her son to live. They really handle that so well. In some ways, I think Dean found Mary in her, even as others are finding Mary in him, and one of the beautiful things about how they're writing this relationship is that he wants to preserve her choice in that, Mary's choice from that conversation way back in early S4, more than he wants to protect his second chance in that. Yet she (Lisa) is doing essentially the same thing in return, trying to protect Dean's choice more than any benefits of her own second chance. Mary's internal conflict seems to me mirrored in this relationship and in both of them individually. She is Mary the mother. He is Mary the refugee. They are both Mary the nurturer and Mary the fighter. It's a surprisingly delicate touch, or maybe it's just my fanwank, but whatever. I am loving it (which means it will burn on the ceiling next week). Lisa never met Mary (and I'm guessing she never will), but if they had... *sigh* I just wish they had.
As for Ben, Lisa has such potential to be a complex character and is being written so well, but her son is still primarily a plot device more than a character. Boo! Now that Dean has hooked back up with Sam, I suppose we won't see Ben (or Lisa) again until Something Awful happens. What is there has the potential to be beautiful and painful, and I'm so glad they got the same actor back. There isn't much chemistry between them yet, but I think, like Jo's chemistry with Dean in No Exit, there doesn't have to be an in-your-face connection for it to work. Some of the quieter connections are the most rewarding, and I think Jensen and this actor (what's his name?) could build it here. I mentioned this earlier in the post, but one of the things that stays with me about the 2nd scene is the look in Dean's eyes just before Ben leaves. I wonder if Jensen played it that way deliberately, because it reminded me of Dean saying in S1 that John never looked at him the same way again after the Shtriga incident. Expressions like that, or a tone of voice, can slip out so easily, and you don't realize how extreme it can be to a little kid, how long and how deeply it lingers. Ben's situation is nothing like Dean's was (and I think the too-easy parallels drawn there are a disservice to the massive degree of fucked-up that Sam and Dean were raised to be), but that expression stuck with me, how Ben might take it from someone he idolizes but also recognizes as very wrecked. If things had continued throughout Ben's adolescence the way they were before undead Sams and Campbells showed up, I don't think it's fair to say he would have been nearly as fucked up as Sam and Dean were before S1 ever happened (I don't think he would have acted around his eventual kid the way Dean was around him), but I also don't think it's fair to say he wouldn't have absorbed any of Dean's massive fucked-up issues simply by living so closely with him as someone protected by him. There's just no way around that, and I appreciate very much that the show recognized that in their scenes together and let the impact rest largely on the power of acting and on the fact that everyone in this situation (Dean, Lisa, Ben) recognized as much of the level of fucked-up as they were each capable of understanding. No easy answers. I like the parallels much better that way, show. STOP THE ANVIL ABUSE.
My perpetual love/hate relationship with this show comes down more to delivery than content. Or, to quote a man much more brilliant than myself: "There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view I hold dear." S5, in a nutshell.
Moving on...
Sam, Sam. Who are you, Sam? Are you as tired of asking that as we are? It was weird to see Sam putting on his Captain Empathy face during his solo investigation, and somewhat unsettling to see him appearing to be comparatively well-in-the-head next to Dean and the Campbells. I don't trust this at all because the clues are already building up that Something Is Wrong With Sam, and I'm just tired of it already. I wish we were in his head this episode rather than Dean's, because we had Dean feeling out of sorts last time out seeing Sam alive again. Now it felt like the perfect opportunity to see through Sam's eyes, being around Dean again and dealing with the emotional mess he left behind... to say nothing of his own emotional mess from being through hell with Lucifer, an enormous minefield of emotional trauma that nobody is being allowed a glimpse of. I can fanwank that he is changed, that he is dealing in his own way with PTSD and has shut down emotionally, compartmentalized to better handle it, but that's just conjecture. It doesn't translate to what the scripts are delivering us. As much as I loved seeing a touch of brotherly caring and sharing in that motel room scene, I would much rather have Dean a little more interested in just what Sam is thinking and how he's feeling. Yet another reason why that scene bothered me. We already covered the same material, and with more nuance, between Dean and Ben, and Lisa and Dean. Now we had a Sam and Dean scene about the same issue, with Sam's post-hell feelings completely unaddressed? *sigh* Don't get me wrong, seeing Cas again next week will be wonderful, but I think the chances of seeing through Sam's eyes have greatly decreased. And the next week is the one about Bobby, right? So... yeah. How ironic that the last time we had a good, long, unflinching look inside Sam's head during a dark spell that had nothing to do with evil! demon! Sam and everything to do with Sam the person and his feelings, was in an episode called "Mystery Spot."
Ah, Mystery Spot. Still a gem. ♥
Back to S6, though, and how they set up the boys on the road together again. *sigh* I have a feeling my views are very different from fandom's in general, and you know, any other day, I would have loved the Impala scene at the end. Loved it. But... really, now? Sam brought Dean back to babysit, and now it's guns blazing into the horizon with Lisa's blessing? Lisa, I've already talked about, but let me address Sam's side of this. One of the reasons the entire lightness of rationale for Sam bringing Dean back in the fold bugs the hell out of me is that it slabs a big fat lie on his motivations (and Bobby's) for keeping Dean in the dark for so long. This is only compounded by the fact that Sam, who made Dean swear to give up hunting and live with Lisa, turns around and brings Dean back for babysitting duties, then questions the validity of Dean being with Lisa at all. This is only compounded by the fact that Sam could've injected Dean with the antidote in 6x01 and walked away before Dean woke, leaving Bobby or even Dean himself in continued ignorance to clean up the djinn mess, but instead brought Dean to the Campbell's hideout and tried to bring Dean back into their world. So where exactly was that house burning that kept Sam and Bobby from informing Dean a year ago? Coming back from hell is something better kept a secret to protect Dean's hope of a happy life and to protect Lisa and Ben from danger, but by golly, there's a baby in my back seat! This calls for Dean! Hope you don't bite it, Lisa! Yeah, I'm sure there is some dark ulterior motive for Sam to want Dean back in his life now, something we will find out later, but for now, the writers are leaving Sam (and by extension, Bobby) out to dry here. They were both so belligerently determined that keeping Dean ignorant was the only right choice, but there is no belligerent determination to keep each other from bringing him back. What the hell, show? There's no balance to their behavior, to their choices, Sam's in particular. I suppose it could work if Sam (or not!Sam) is purposefully trying to separate Dean from his makeshift family and everything is leading to some reveal that Sam (or Douche Gramp) has been planning this all along. Maybe Lisa is the Secret Evil, and this is all somewhat like the Senior Partners' concept of Hell and Sam is trying to lure Dean out without waking him (or, more importantly, Lisa) up.
*sigh* That leads me back around to Sam as the Mystery Plot. I don't know the general sentiment out there, whether Dean is now more popular with the audience so that his is the primary viewpoint just as Sam's was in S1, but it has got to stop. I hope they ease out of his viewpoint and get into Sam's, the way we were in Dean's head when he was facing a mystery fresh out of hell himself in S4. But I fear more and more that the mystery is going to be Sam's and the viewpoint is going to be Dean's, and Sam himself will once again not be considered for simple human material (such as having his own reaper moment when he died in S2) but will be the catch-all embodiment of every supernatural mystery on the show. Which can be a nice, gritty theme and all, but at some point, they're sacrificing characterization to preserve an unnecessary sense of suspense and intrigue. I think they passed that point when S3 never reconciled how Sam felt about dying and being pulled back from wherever he was, when they turned that enormous moment into a question mark above Dean's head.
C'mon, S6. Prove me wrong. I have loved every even-numbered season so far. Please don't fail me.
Random Things:
* Smart Sam! How I've missed you! ♥ Exorcise S5 from my memory. C'mon! You can kill with your brain! Do it.
* The moving scenes were well edited and really gave that sense of ~family. I kept expecting her reactions to be heavy-handed and they weren't. Plus Ben was suitably dead-eyed and lethargic like any pre-teen in a new house. (p.s. Lisa and young Mary. Proof the show can write a good woman. But can they sustain one? /sadly pessimistic)
* I would love that shopping sequence no matter what season, episode or context. Just love. ♥
* Sam quietly taking note of what/how often Dean drinks makes my heart both hurt and heal a little. Oh, boys. Dean will never know how much Sam sees and takes in. There are times I think he takes in more but acts on it less, while Dean takes in less but acts on it more.
* Jensen must be recognized for his work on this show. When is that gonna happen?? Everything they spell out in dialogue is already there in his performance. I wish they'd trust him a little more with this material, and trust Jared, too, rather than hold our hands through it.
* If ever you want to kill me, you have the formula. (Cute Babies + Baby Humor) x Jensen Ackles. Yeah, that'll do it.
* I love the running gag of Dean and the Magic Fingers. That was one of the few cute moments in Sin City, when he noticed the bed in that motel room, hee.
* Suicidal Teddy Bear > Exploding Shapeshifter Baby, but it's a photo finish.
* Protective Sam! ♥ Never let it be said that Sam doesn't protect Dean or take his side. I really love how Jared played it. Cautious, protective and diplomatic. Cautious because he's not fully sympathetic with the Campbells' motives in general, protective because he doesn't fully trust them with Dean specifically, and diplomatic because he doesn't fully trust Dean with them, either, and diplomacy will keep Dean from setting off a hornet's nest. I never believed for a moment (I never have believed, even at the end of S4) that if Dean was in actual danger, that Sam wouldn't unleash a serious can of whoop ass Samfu on whomever it was that threatened him. It used to be rare and unpredictable in its success rate, but lately? S4 onward? Yeah, he's pretty hardcore. I like that very much, very much. It releases Dean from the heavy-handed S1 burden of being the only protector, evens out their relationship, and allows both boys to show an equal amount of investment in the other. Yeah, that pretty much hits me in all the right places. (Oh, and did I mention it's hot? Sam! ♥)
* The Campbells know about Dean in hell. I wonder if they consider Sam a "monster" to study. Or, heck, if they consider both brothers monsters to poke and prod. Maybe they're trying to trap an angel in the bargain, too. Anything's possible with Douche Gramp (♥). I vote for some Casfu on his ass somewhere down the line. Christian's, too. (I can't believe they killed off the only semi-interesting young Campbell. Nice move, show.)
* I can only guess that his year as a dad has reinstated Dean's care for innocents, since despite all show's dialogue to the contrary, both brothers have spent the greater part of the last four seasons neglecting to care about the human cost of their endeavors aside from moments of projecting their issues onto the PIPs or MOTWs. 50 words of Latin, guys. Let's try this again. Meg, where are you? (Real Meg, that is, not S5 Meg.)
* "You're not the only one who wants to know." Oh, Jared. ♥ That was a lot packed into a single line. And hey! Was that a Sam POV poking through? I could have sworn I saw it for a moment there.
* I am going to miss Blond Campbell for the two seconds he's dead. Which makes me think of what someone told me about 5x22 and not to belabor a point, but honestly, God brings back Cas who brings back Bobby and cleans up Dean, and then someone pops out Sam and Samuel(?!), but still not any effort for Ellen or Jo? Or the hosts Sam blood-sucked? Or the hosts Dean ganked? Or the angel hosts Cas ganked? Or the multitudes that Lucifer killed? No? Everyone is a statistic except for white men, preferably hot? Okay, show. Just for that--okay, not just for that--I hope Lisa outlives all the men and ganks the Big Bad at the end, original Terminator style. (Yes, I realize I am yearning for a completely different show in that.)
* Dean's reaction to Lisa's "bike ride" answer was so well played by Jensen. Nothing was said, but you saw the same instinct flicker that flared up in 5x02 before he caught himself. He caught himself this time, again without a line of dialogue, and more quietly, more self-aware. Beautiful.
* Cindy is pretty amazing as Lisa. I love so many of her acting choices. Can she stay? Please??
* The Impala! \o/ Yeah, that scene worked better on a second viewing. I was better able to distance myself from the lines that grated and just focus on the IMPOSSIBLE PERFECTION OF BEAUTY AND GRACE THAT IS THE IMPALA. ♥ I love you, Sam, but Dean's car >>>>>>>>> yours. WOO.
* THANK CAS AND ALL THAT'S HOLY THAT WITH THE SHAPESHIFTER THEME, AT LEAST WE DID NOT HAVE DEAN LOOKING AT SAM THINKING "I CAN SO RELATE TO THIS. :'( IS HE EVEN MY BROTHER ANYMORE...?" I had to capslock that, okay? I FEEL RELIEVED.
* The preview of Sam working out leads me to believe that he will be Evil in word or deed next week. They always seem to equate Sam having an adult body with Sam being evil. Gotta love Kripke's ~Americana values. (But seriously: WOOF.)
* I miss the ghost episodes. But not the Ghostfacers. Or the Real Ghostbusters. Or Chuck. Just to reiterate.
Basically: I like this one more the more I watch it, and what I don't like about it can be reduced to a few lines that get on my nerves but I shouldn't let them ruin the whole episode for me.
More later, possibly.